When Mark Ellison QC produced last year’s report into undercover police officers spying on Stephen Lawrence’s family, he also found that officers appeared to have engineered miscarriages of justice.

Several undercover officers, including Bob Lambert and Jim Boyling, went through court cases under false identities, swearing to tell the truth and then do nothing but lie.

Boyling was on trial as part of a group, meaning that this police officer was party to defence meetings with their lawyers. One of his comrades was convicted. This was eventually overturned last year, though it does leave the question hanging of how many other wrongful convictions have been left to stand.

After his report into the Lawrence spying, Mark Ellison was tasked to produce a new report on the miscarriages of justice. He was due to report in March, but on 13 January a written parliamentary answer revealed that there will merely be a ‘progress report’. The final item has no projected completion date.

This will set some people’s alarm bells ringing. Two years after the Home Affairs Select Committee’s ‘interim report‘ into undercover policing we are still waiting for the full thing. With the Chilcott report fossilising in the vaults it would be easy to see Ellison’s delay as too convenient for those with something to hide. However it seems more likely that the scale of the job is significantly larger than anticipated.

When police pre-emptively arrested 114 climate activists at a 2009 meeting to plan the shutdown of a coal fired power station, one of them was Mark Stone, aka police officer Mark Kennedy. Charges were brought against 26. A first trial of 20 activists saw all of them convicted.

The remaining six pointed out before their trial that, in the meantime, they’d uncovered Kennedy’s true identity. They asked to see his undisclosed evidence but, rather than hand that over, prosecutors dropped the charges. It turned out Kennedy had recorded the meeting, securing evidence that exonerated the six but which the prosecutors and police had withheld from the defence. The initial 20 had their convictions quashed afterwards.

Sir Christopher Rose’s now-discredited report said that the case was anomalous and there was no systemic problem. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Kier Starmer, dodged Jeremy Paxman’s repeated question about whether there might be other cases.

Then an earlier,  similar case in which Kennedy had participated in stopping a coal train on its way to Drax power station was highlighted. Another 29 convictions were overturned. It was clearly systemic.

We have information on less than 10% of the officers who have worked for Britain’s political secret police since the formation of the Special Demonstration Squad in 1968. If, like Kennedy, they each secured around 50 wrongful convictions then there are about 8,000 miscarriages of justice being left to stand. Even if we conservatively assume there was only one wrongful conviction per officer per year of service, it’s around 600.

It is no exaggeration to say that we could be looking at the biggest nobbling of the judicial system ever exposed. Let’s hope that, in contrast to the undercover officers, Mark Ellison will reveal the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Bob Lambert was an undercover officer who spied on animal rights organisations in the 1980s. In that time, he:

• deceived four women into sexual relationships. He lived with one and fathered a child
• stole the identity of a dead child
• was prosecuted under that false identity, lying throughout a court case
• co-wrote the McLibel leaflet that led to the longest court case in history, though his involvement was kept from the court
• was part of a group who placed timed incendiary devices in department stores that sold fur

On this last point, three devices were simultaneously planted. The other two activists were convicted (though as Lambert’s evidence was withheld from court, they have launched an appeal). Although he has been named in parliament as planting the third incendiary device that burned down Debenhams in Harrow, Lambert has repeatedly denied it.

But if it was not Lambert, who was it? Was there really a fourth person who neither the others nor Lambert have mentioned before and who Lambert – despite getting the other two caught red handed in the crowning achievement of his deployment – allowed to get away unmentioned? He has yet to explain.

If all this were not enough, he then went on to run the Special Demonstration Squad. He oversaw officers who did similar things: lying in court to secure wrongful convictions and having long-term relationships with activists. His officers spied on numerous black justice campaigns including Stephen Lawrence’s family. Lambert was recently singled out for condemnation by the Ellison report into spying on the Lawrence family.

And yet he is employed by the University of St Andrews and London Metropolitan University on the basis of his ‘counter terrorism’ experience. As Nick Cohen said in the Observer,

he instructs graduates on how to be police officers, a task for which he is uniquely unqualified.

As the pressure mounts on Lambert’s academic positions, one of his employers has defended him. Yesterday BBC TV’s London Tonight reported on the growing controversy. Having issued a statement to the local press last month, for the first time London Met gave an interview.

Tim Parsons, Senior Criminology lecturer, managed an extraordinary feat of euphemistic skill, saying

He has extremely rich experience in professional practice, accepting that some of that is now controversial.

It’s not controversial, strictly speaking. It’s pretty much universally criticised.

And professional? Quite the opposite.  ‘Grossly unprofessional’ was the phrase used by the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Jon Murphy for the sexual relationships of officers like Lambert and his proteges.

Chief Constable Mick Creedon said last year that such activity

can only be seen as an abject failure of the deployment, a gross abuse of their role and their position as a police officer and an individual and organisational failing

If there is a gross abuse, there is a gross abuser. Bear in mind that Lambert not only had four such relationships himself but, aware of what it caused, was responsible for others who inflicted it on more women.

There is a peculiar conflict in London Metropolitan University. Whilst its criminology department employs Lambert, much of the institution defines itself with a strident social justice remit. It is a dark irony that a university department (and the public relations) defend this gross abuser of women at an institution that is home to the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit.

Yet Tim Parsons told the BBC

If you look at the things that we’re always championing such as human rights there is no reason whatsover why Bob shouldn’t have been offered employment at this university.

Human rights form a significant part of the legal case against the Metropolitan Police by women who had relationships with undercover officers – including Lambert personally and some of his later underlings.

The women assert that the actions of the undercover officers breached their rights as protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, including Article 3 (no one shall be subject to inhumane and degrading treatment) and Article 8 (respect for private and family life, including the right to form relationships without unjustified interference by the state)

What the undercover officers did was either the fault of the individual (and a failing of managerial oversight), or it was an overt failing of management for authorising it. Wherever the blame lies, as both spy and manager, it must lie with Lambert.

His actions have caused the Met to pay out record compensation and – a genuine rarity – apologise for their officer’s behaviour. The unit he devoted decades to stands utterly disgraced and discredited, its methods disowned by senior officers, the subject of numerous investigations with a view to criminal charges, and the subject of a forthcoming full-scale public inquiry.

If Bob Lambert were at academic institutions as a lecturer in microbiology or Russian literature, or as a cleaner or gardener, it could be argued that his past should have no bearing on his position. But Bob Lambert is at the London Metropolitan University and the University of St Andrews on the basis of his indefensible past. They hired him before this was public knowledge – it appears that he deceived these universities just as he deceived those he spied on.

Officers and managers from the Special Demonstration Squad should be part of such courses only as case studies in how wrong it can go.

Islington Against Police Spies have called a picket of London Metropolitan University (opposite Holloway Road tube) on Friday 30 January, 12-2pm.

Islington Against Police Spies (IAPS) have called a picket of London Metropolitan University, where former Special Demonstration Squad officer (and later boss) Bob Lambert lectures in criminology.

As reported in the Guardian, the university is under increasing pressure on its employment of Lambert to train tomorrow’s police managers, a role which Observer columnist Nick Cohen said Lambert is ‘uniquely unqualified’ to have.

The IAPS callout says:

Join us to demand the removal of Bob Lambert from London Metropolitan University.

Picket London Met
Friday January 30th
12.00 – 2.00pm
LMU Tower, 166-220 Holloway Road, 
London N7 8DB

Bring placards, banners, anything to make noise.

In November Islington Against Police Spies (IAPS) held a lively picket of London Metropolitan University in Holloway, launching our campaign to demand the sacking or resignation of Bob Lambert. Former police spy, Special Branch manipulator, abuser of women, agent provocateur, Lambert is now lecturing at London Met on policing and criminology.

As local residents we feel it is totally inappropriate for London Metropolitan to be employing a man with Lambert’s record in such a position where he has influence and power over the lives of students, who may be young or vulnerable. Most particularly Lambert has shown he cannot be trusted not to abuse and lie to women.

Islington Against Police Spies have committed ourselves to holding events every month at least, to keep putting pressure on the University and raising awareness of Lambert’s past, until he is forced to leave London Met. We know this CAN be done – but it’s not necessarily going to be easy. Hopefully this campaign will get stronger until it’s irresistible. BUT WE NEED HELP – we call on anyone who thinks Bob Lambert should not be working in a supposedly progressive university to support our campaign.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Come down and join the picket on January 30th. The bigger and noisier our protest, the more notice London Met will have to take of us.

Protest to the following in the London Met hierarchy, and demand that they sack Bob Lambert:

• John Raftery, Vice-Chancellor; email: j.raftery@londonmet.ac.uk Tel: 020 7133 2001
• Peter McCaffery, Deputy Vice-Chancellor; email: P.McCaffery@londonmet.ac.uk Tel: 020 7133 2401
• Jonathan Woodhead, Executive Officer; email: j.woodhead@londonmet.ac.uk Tel: 020 7133 2042
• Paul Bowler, Deputy Chief Executive; email: P.Bowler@londonmet.ac.uk Tel: 020 7133 2031
• Peter Garrod, University Secretary and Clerk to the Board; email: p.garrod@londonmet.ac.uk Tel: 020 7133 2004

You can also email Bob Lambert directly and let him know what you think of his activities: r.lambert@londonmet.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7133 4692/2911

Spread the word – tell others about this campaign, raise the issue in your networks, communities, union, etc – the more people know about Bob, the more pressure we all put on the university, the more likely it is that he will have to go.

This campaign is being organised by Islington Against Police Spies, a group of local residents and activists.

Email us: islingtonagainstpolicespies@riseup.net
(Please note our new email address)

Over Friday and Saturday, 6 and 7 February 2015, an impressive line-up of speakers will offer powerful accounts on contemporary policing.

The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and The Monitoring Group, in partnership with Imran Khan and Partners and Tottenham Rights, have organised a two-day conference at Conway Hall in London to seek common ground between families, community workers, journalists, academics, lawyers and affected communities, to understand and challenge the problem of police corruption, spying and racism.

The conference takes as its starting point that there is a profound crisis in policing across the UK that requires us to share information and experiences, develop ideas and create new partnerships that will spur a momentum for genuine state accountability.

Speakers on Friday will include:

• Rosa Curling, Leigh Day Solicitors
• Rebekah Delsol, Open Society
• Rob Evans, Guardian journalist
• Dr Jules Holroyd, University of Nottingham
• Professor Gus John, Honorary Fellow, Institute of Education
• John McDonnell MP, Hayes and Harlington
• Rebecca Roberts, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies
• Dr Mike Shiner, London School of Economics
• Helen Steel, spied on environmental activist
• Mark Thomas, political satarist and reporter
• Dr David Whyte, University of Liverpool
• Dr Patrick Williams, Manchester Metropolitan University
• Harriet Wistrich, Birnberg Pierce and Partners solicitors

Speakers on Saturday will include:

• ​​Janet Alder, sister of Christopher Alder
• Raju Bhatt, Bhatt Murphy Solicitors (TBC)
• Professor Ben Bowling, King’s College London
• Richard Garside, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies
• Courtenay Griffiths QC
• Suresh Grover, The Monitoring Group
• Lee Jasper, formerly Mayor of London’s Adviser on Policing
• Imran Khan, Lawyer to the Stephen Lawrence family
• Dame Doreen Lawrence
• Lee Lawrence, son of Cherry Groce
• Paul O’Connor, Director of Pat Finucane Centre, Derry
• Sukdev Reel, mother of Ricky Reel
• David Rose, Investigative journalist
• Stafford Scott, Tottenham Rights

You can book for Friday, Saturday or both days.

The full programme and booking information are on the event’s page on the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies’ site.

Most of the revelations about Britain’s political secret police have involved Bob Lambert. As an undercover officer in the Special Demonstration Squad, Lambert infiltrated London Greenpeace and co-wrote the leaflet that triggered the McLibel trial – a fact which, like his existence, was kept from the court. He had a long-term relationship with Jacqui, fathering a son that he abandoned and had a second serious relationship. He went through a prosecution under his false identity. He has been named in parliament as the person who placed a timed incendiary device in a department store whilst in his animal rights activist persona, though he has strenuously denied the charge.

He went on to be manager of the SDS, overseeing officers such as Peter Francis who says he was tasked to ‘find dirt’ to discredit Stephen Lawrence’s family, and Jim Boyling who, following in his mentor’s footsteps, had children with a woman he spied on and caused a miscarriage of justice by going to court in his fake identity.

These days Lambert holds two academic posts, using what is euphemistically called his ‘counter terrorism’ experience to train tomorrow’s police managers at the University of St Andrews and London Metropolitan University.

At the COPS meeting at London Met earlier this month a local group, Islington Against Police Spies, announced their intention to campaign for Lambert to be removed from his post. They have organised a picket of the university (Tower Building, 166-220 Holloway Road, 
London N7 8DB) for this Friday, 28 November, from noon until 2pm.

See their post for more details on Lambert and the campaign.

Defend the Right to Protest have organised a one day conference in London on Sunday 16 November. Under the banner We Do Not Consent, the programme includes many people involved in the exposure and campaiging on the undercover policing issue, as well as justice campaigns for thise killed in custody, trade union struggles, anti-fracking campaigns,  and protesters rights groups.

In Britain years of campaigning have exposed the extent of injustices past and present: the fitting-up of striking miners who took on Thatcher, the appalling response to the Hillsborough disaster, police spying on Stephen Lawrence’s family and the treatment of women activists by undercover cops. Those seeking accountability face a long, hard struggle with many powerful institutions ranged against them.

Now we see fresh attacks on our civil liberties. Despite the death of Ian Tomlinson in 2009, demonstrators continue to be kettled and physically abused by police. Trade unionists are hemmed in by anti-union laws and face further threats to their rights to strike and demonstrate. Legal aid cuts are stripping away people’s ability to challenge state policies and abuses. On top of this the Conservatives have pledged to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.

Austerity, escalating inequality and the “war on terror” form a wider context to this assault. Protests, occupations, organising and solidarity are the only tools we have to fight back and raise alternatives – whether it is in Ferguson, Hong Kong, Cairo or here in Britain.

It’s hoped this conference will provide a space where we can come together to discuss what’s going on, share experiences, equip ourselves to defend our basic rights and think about how to build a stronger movement against injustice for the battles ahead.

Tickets are only £5 (£3 unwaged, £10 solidarity price). More info here.

On 12 November there will be ‘The Truth About Britain’s Political Secret Police’, a COPS public meeting at London Metropolitan University, hosted by LMU’s Unison branch.

Three people targeted by the spy units will be speaking.

Helen Steel has been a social justice activist in North London all her adult life. She was a defendant in the McLibel trial – the longest in English history. She later found out that her partner who lived with her for several years at the time of the case was an undercover police officer. She is one of the women in the Police Spies Out of Lives campaign and legal case.

Dave Smith was a construction worker who was a victim of an industry blacklist. A private company ran an illegal database of over 3,000 people known to raise health and safety issues, be involved in union activities or be politically active outside work. This illegal activity was built on information supplied by employers and police officers. He is now a lynchpin of the Blacklist Support Group.

Merrick Badger is an environmental and social justice activist. He was one of the group who became suspicious of their friend Mark Stone, confronting and exposing him as police officer Mark Kennedy in 2010. He has since helped to expose other police spies, researching and campaigning on the political policing issue.

The speakers will talk about their experience and the wider issues. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion.

FREE ENTRY.
General public welcome.

Wednesday 12 November 2014, 6pm-8pm

Henry Thomas Lecture Theatre
London Metropolitan University Tower Building
166-220 Holloway Road
N7 8DB

Nearest tube: Holloway Road

Facebook event

Earlier this year the Ellison report found that Britain’s secret police unit the Special Demonstration Squad had spied on the family of Stephen Lawrence. They have subsequently admitted spying on another 17 similar family justice campaigns.

One was that of Ricky Reel, found dead after a racially motivated attack in October 1997.

His mother Sukhdev launched a petition that has already had over 75,000 signatures. She said:

My son Ricky was just 20 years-old when he was found dead in the River Thames after being racially abused by two men. The police said that they were never able to establish exactly how he died, that it must have been an accident. We spent years pushing for a proper investigation, to get justice for our son. We’ve now found out that because we were questioning their investigations, they spied on us.

There are no words to explain the pain me and my family were feeling, a time when we needed to be left alone to grieve for our son. We thought the police would be on our side and help our grief by finding out the truth.

We know that it wasn’t just us. Other grieving families who were seeking justice after being let down by the police were also spied on. These include the families of Stephen Lawrence, Cherry Groce, Rolan Adams, Michael Menson, Joy Gardner, Jean Charles de Menezes, Harry Stanley and many more. All of these families were spied on because they were pushing for the police to investigate the murder or suspicious deaths of loved ones.

It is devastating to feel betrayed by the people you are expected to trust. Police spy on criminals, what crime did we commit?

We have no faith or trust left in the police. In March this year, the Home Secretary Theresa May announced that there will be a Judge led Public Inquiry into undercover policing but this will not take place for another year, maybe after the next election when we may even have a new government.

I’m calling on the Home Secretary to immediately:

1. Seek a public apology from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to all the families affected by police spying and take action against police officers for any wrong doing

2. Assure us that that the family justice campaigns would be consulted when drawing the terms of reference for the Public Inquiry into undercover policing

3. Assure us that affected families will be provided with legal aid so that they can be properly legally represented at the Public Inquiry

4. Assure us that the practice of police “spying” of family justice campaigns has stopped”

The Monitoring Group have called for a peaceful vigil on Tuesday 21 October at New Scotland Yard from 5-7pm.

Speakers include:

• Sukhdev Reel, mother of Ricky Reel
• John McDonnell MP for Hayes & Harlington
• Stafford Scott, Tottenham Rights
• Suresh Grover, The Monitoring Group
• Helen Steel, one of the women deceived into a relationship by an undercover police officer
• Liz Fekete, Institute of Race Relations

New Scotland Yard
8-10 Broadway
London SW1H 0BG

A massive new report on undercover policing from police satellite body Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary was published yesterday.

As with the huge stack of similar reports on the issue, it gives us quite a few dry facts and criticises some administration but fails to tackle the key, shocking issues.

It reveals that 1,229 officers are trained for undercover work. However the police’s National Undercover Index only lists 568 of them. This ‘renders the database unsuitable to the task for which it was created,’ says the report.

Seven types of deployment are listed, but there is no mention of the political spycops. For a report commissioned as a response to the revelation that the Stephen Lawrence campaign had been spied on, after several years’ groundswell following the exposure of Mark Kennedy in 2010, this is no mere oversight. It’s a dodge.

Campaigning for social justice or for the proper investigation of the death of a loved one due to incompetent or malevolent police is left entirely unmentioned in all 206 pages, unless they somehow count among ‘those who seek to commit serious crimes, eg acts of terrorism’.

The report is only critical of administration, training and support for officers, rather than the impacts on citizens and the sinister intent of certain undercover operations. It essentially saying that a little bit more oversight and authorisation will make everything alright.

The authors find it ‘reassuring’ there is apparently ‘a universal understanding by the undercover officers and those managing them’ that intimate relationships aren’t allowed and ‘there are good safeguards in place’ to prevent it.

But out of the 14 spycops so far exposed, 13 had sexual relations with citizens they spied on. Three had kids. One – Bob Lambert –  became a manager overseeing a new crop of officers who did it. Citizens have not been ‘protected’ from the most complete invasion of privacy that it is possible for the state to enact. They have been subjected to it in such a comprehensive way that it can only be seen as accepted standard practice and strategy.

It shows a staggering amount of gall to even suggest that there is ‘universal acceptance’ of it being wrong and there is therefore no problem.

There are 49 recommendations at the end of the report. None are about the known outrages of these relationships, let alone others such as undermining family justice cases and political campaigns, and the police collusion with illegal corporate activity.

We need a simple law that bans sexual relationships whilst undercover outright. It is already illegal in Germany for spies to have sexual relations in their undercover persona and German society is not suffering because of that restriction. It is needless, inexcusable institutionalised sexism.

But the report tells us that

if society wants the police to identify & apprehend some of its most dangerous criminals, it has to allow individual police officers to “get their hands dirty”.

The report does concede that the ‘neither confirm nor deny’ (NCND) policy “is not grounded in legislation” & mustn’t be used if it risks a miscarriage of justice. This is to be welcomed. But as words in isolation, it is meaningless. Police lawyers are obstructing a legal bid for justice by a group of women, saying that NCND is essential.  Those same lawyers also argued that the supposedly safeguarded-from sexual relationships are actually legally authorised. The women’s group has already condemned the new report.

This report is yet another bucket of bitter whitewash written by police and their associates. It insults those who’ve been abused by the undercover officers from the counter-democratic political police units. Beyond that, it insults anyone who believes in the right to make a stand for environmental and social justice.

It is another decoy, papering over deep cracks in a rotten architecture. It must not distract from the need for a full, open, public inquiry that examines each aspect of undercover political policing in detail and takes testimony from all those impacted by it. COPS will continue to campaign for such an inquiry.

We will continue to host events and support those organised by the various groups and individuals who have been targeted. You can support our campaign by coming to those events and getting your trade union, campaigning organisation or other group to affiliate to us.

Prosecutors have finally admitted that a defendant in a court case was an undercover police officer. Jim Boyling was a Special Demonstration Squad officer, deployed under the name Jim Sutton.

In 1997 he was on trial with a group of other Reclaim The Streets activists after being arrested a protest at a London Transport office. Having sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, he lied and lied and lied.

Whilst most, including Boyling, were acquitted, John Jordan was convicted. Last year the conviction was quashed but the Crown Prosecution Service refused to say why. Their given document of reasons was literally a blank sheet of paper.

The fact that Metropolitan police chief Bernard Hogan-Howe had already publicly declared that ‘Sutton’ was an undercover officer made no odds. They admitted that Boyling was a police officer but – farcically sticking to the crumbling policy of ‘neither confirm nor deny’ – would not concede that he was an undercover officer, as if he might have had the full time activist persona of Jim Sutton of his own volition as some sort of hobby.

But in August police were forced to say that Boyling and his former boss Bob Lambert had both been undercover officers. Late last month the Jordan case was back in court and prosecutors finally admitted that Boyling had been deployed as an undercover police officer throughout the trial.

To have a police officer be party to all the defence meetings, in a position to help formulate that defence, is an extremely serious breach of lawyer-client confidentiality. That the trial went ahead is a serious abuse of the judicial system.

A fortnight ago the Crown’s QC, Richard Whittam, told the court

Had the Crown Prosecution Service known that ‘Jim Sutton’ was an undercover police officer, there is a strong likelihood that John Jordan would not have been prosecuted.

Note the careful wording – the CPS is not saying that it didn’t know Boyling was an officer, just implying it. The court was specifically told that this wasn’t actually an admission of anything at all.

WE’VE SEEN THIS BEFORE

Certainly, we know that the CPS have colluded with police to hide the existence of undercover officers from courts before, and that they’ve insisted that arrested officers are primed for being charged alongside bona fide activists.

On 12 April 2009 a group of 114 climate activists gathered in Nottingham to prepare to occupy Ratcliffe on Soar coal fired power station, but they were all pre-emptively arrested. One of their number was Mark Stone, aka police officer Mark Kennedy.

After he was exposed 18 months later, two official reports looked into collusion between the CPS and police in the Ratcliffe case. The Independent Police Complaints Commission’s report found the CPS knew about the activists’ plan before it happened, before many of the activists themselves.

Ex-judge Sir Christopher Rose’s was also asked to investigate the Ratcliffe case. His report quotes an email to police from the CPS about how ‘we will always be vulnerable on disclosure, especially matters covert’ and that even the lowly local CPS office ‘are aware there is an asset involved’. The CPS’ Case Management Review Panel of senior lawyers discussed

risks regarding the “right” questions being asked by the defence regarding covert practices.

Tellingly, while many of the activists were told that they would not be prosecuted, Kennedy was still retained in the ‘charging pool’. In early July 2009, Nick Paul – the Domestic Extremism Co-ordinator in the CPS Special Crime Unit – was asked by a Detective Chief Inspector not to charge Kennedy, but Paul rebuffed him.

To feel able to overrule such a high ranking police officer shows the level of confidence in Nick Paul and illustrates the degree to which this CPS official was controlling matters. Three months after Kennedy’s arrest the CPS were stubbornly intent on on charging him, which indicates that the CPS are not as averse to such things as their recent claim about Boyling would have us believe.

Of the initial 114 arrested, 26 were called for trial (Kennedy was not among them). It was split into two hearings. Twenty admitted participation but said their actions were justified. A further six said they had not participated in the plan.

As ‘the justifiers’ court date approached, prosecutor Felicity Gerry was told about the existence of an undercover officer. She knew Mark Kennedy’s real identity a week before any activists did. For the six weeks before trial, and every second she was in court, she knew that a police officer had filed evidence on the case that the defence were unaware of, yet she failed to mention it to the court. The twenty were wrongfully convicted.

When ‘the deniers’ came to court in January 2011, they asked to see Kennedy’s evidence that they knew exonerated them. Rather than disclose it, the Crown dropped the charges and the trial dramatically collapsed.

In a further display of shadiness, the CPS were said they had found

Previously unavailable information that significantly undermined the prosecution’s case

but specifically said it was

not the existence of an undercover officer.

This is now known to be a lie. If they lie about that, what else do they lie about?

It’s a pattern we’ve seen again this week as the case against British Guantanmo detainee Moazzam Begg was dropped at the last minute because MI5 had failed to hand over relevant documents. Although, again, the CPS refuses to actually admit its reasons for not going to trial.

TWO BUCKETS OF WHITEWASH

Sir Christopher Rose’s inquiry did not speak to interview the man at the centre, CPS Special Crime Unit Domestic Extremism Co-ordinator Nick Paul. Rose – who, as a Surveillance Commissioner had the ultimate sign-of on the validity of Kennedy and co’s deployment and thereby suffered a conflict of interest – concluded that mistakes had been made but there was nothing untoward and ‘the failures were individual, not systemic’.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Kier Starmer, went on Newsnight to defend the report. Paxman’s opening question was

Are you absolutely certain there are no other cases in which people have been convicted on the basis of the evidence of undisclosed undercover police officers?

He repeats the question three times in the opening minute and a half of the exchange but still doesn’t get an answer. Starmer merely says that Rose has decided there’s no systemic problem.

Yet, as was already well known, there had already been the Drax 29 case. In June 2008 another group of climate protesters halted a coal train bound for Drax power station in Yorkshire. Again, Mark Kennedy had been involved and, again, this had been kept from the court and another miscarriage of justice was engineered with all 29 convicted. This involved a completely different team of CPS prosecutors. The reality is that the problem is systemic.

That said, both cases were overseen by the same Domestic Extremism Co-ordinator, Nick Paul, in the London CPS office. He shared that office with the Director of Public Prosecutions, Kier Starmer, yet Starmer appears not to have asked Paul about the systemic problems of prosecutors and police withholding evidence in these cases. Soon after the Ratcliffe debacle was exposed, Paul left the CPS, going into private law practice at Doughty Street Chambers. After Starmer stepped down as DPP, he joined Paul there.

HOW MANY MORE? AND WHO DID IT?

The recent admission of Jim Boyling not merely supplying withheld evidence but actually being a defendant takes it all to another level.

If all this is what we know from the handful of secret police officers so far exposed, how big could the problem be? When Mark Ellison QC looked into the spying on the family of Stephen Lawrence, it was immediately apparent to him that wrongful convictions were a serious issue and what was known could be but a tiny fraction of what has occurred. He is currently investigating.

Whistleblower officer Peter Francis praised Ellison’s initiative and criticised

the so called ‘independent’ inquiry being undertaken by Operation Herne, which has so far proved ineffective and appears to be a damage limitation and containment exercise, rather than a proper investigation into past wrongs.

These miscarriages of justice were conducted because of the actions of my former colleagues in the SDS and also officers in the NPOIU and their superiors. I hope that the second inquiry being undertaken by Mr Ellison QC will prove far more robust and transparent in its investigation and findings.

Jim Boyling went through a trial in his undercover persona. He also gave a witness statement for another trial under his false identity (ironically the defence barrister was Kier Starmer). His mentor Bob Lambert admits that he was also prosecuted under his false identity (but says he can’t remember if he was convicted). If that isn’t perjury and perverting the course of justice, it would be interesting to know what is.

But more importantly this collection of cases, spanning different constabularies and eras, surely fits anyone’s definition of a systemic problem and indisputably rubbishes the conclusion of the Rose report.

Who is to blame? The police themselves or the Crown prosecutors who waved it through and, it appears, actively retained officers for prosecution against police wishes?

The CPS are still not saying why they quashed John Jordan’s conviction. It had previously been guessed that they were protecting the identity of Jim Boyling. Now that is known not to be the case, what possible reason is there for not saying what really went on in that case? Is this just force of habit, refusing to disclose anything until compelled? Or is there some other, more sinister and corrupt, reason?

Legal action by the Guardian, BBC and Press Association continues to try and force disclosure.

JUSTICE FOR A FEW, WHAT ABOUT THE MANY?

The Drax and Ratcliffe convictions have now been quashed. Had activists not exposed Kennedy, these convictions and the 20 from Ratcliffe would stand. The six ‘deniers’ would surely have also been convicted. Mark Kennedy was responsible for 49 wrongful convictions that we know of.

If the other political secret police officers have done the same, it means around 7,000 miscarriages of justice since these counter-democratic spy units were formed in 1968. Even if we conservatively estimate one per officer per year of service, it will be around 600. We could well be looking at the largest corruption of the judicial system in history.